General

Israel Demolishes Palestinian Village For 114th Time In Seven Years

June 19, 2017

Israeli bulldozers flattened a village inhabited by the ancient Palestinian Bedouins, a tribe that has lived on the land for thousands of years. Israeli authorities have systematically run the indigenous Bedouins off of their land to pave the way for Jewish-only settlements.

ISRAEL — Israel Land Authority (ILA) officials, along with Israeli police and several bulldozers, raided and then demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev region this week.

The demolition marked the 114th time that the ILA has destroyed the village, with the first time taking place in 2010 and the most recent prior to Wednesday’s demolition taking place just last month.

Most of the structures that were demolished on Wednesday were tin homes that village residents had built over the course of the last month in order to continue living in the area.


But while the residents of al-Araqib are grappling with the most recent demolition that has wiped out their village, Israeli Jewish communities in the region continue to expand on Palestinian land.

Last, year, the ILA approved five new Jewish-only residential settlements in the Negev, two of which are located where “unrecognized” Palestinian Bedouin villages currently stand.

Several rights groups have argued that the demolition of Bedouin villages is directly related to the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, describing the policy as a means of removing the indigenous Palestinian population in order to create even more settlements for Jewish-only Israelis.

Since Israel’s inception in 1948, white Jewish-only settlements have been built on indigenous Palestinian land after the indigenous population has been ethnically cleansed in order to accommodate European Jews in beginning their new lives in Israel.